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June 27, 2010

G77: Red Sox 5, Giants 1

A day after the Red Sox had to use seven relief pitchers, Lester (9-5-1-1-9, 103) turned in his second complete game of the season, and the sixth of his career.

Lester dominated the Giants for the entire game, retiring the final 10 batters on only 26 pitches. He allowed a first-inning run on a single, two stolen bases and an infield groundout.

Lincecum (3-5-4-3-4, 79) gave up a huge home run to David Ortiz in the first; it landed in the bay. Lester batted with the bases loaded in the second and his long fly ball to deep right-center would have been out of many ball parks, but it was a sacrifice fly in the huge San Francisco pasture. Marco Scutaro followed with an RBI single.

Bill Hall, who doubled and scored in the second, singled in Kevin Youkilis with Boston's fourth run. Adrian Beltre hit a first-pitch home run in the ninth. In addition to Hall, Yook and Scutaro had two hits each. Red Sox batters struck out a season-high 15 times.

Pablo Sandoval fouled a pitch off Victor Martinez's left toe in the second inning and Martinez hopped around in pain so much he ended up out by the mound. He stayed in the game another inning, but was replaced by Jason Varitek in the fourth.

The Rays managed only two hits and lost to the Diamondbacks 2-1. Evan Longoria and B.J. Upton had a confrontation in the dugout, after Longoria spoke to Upton not hustling after a triple hit past him to deep center. The Dodgers were two outs away from a 6-2 win over the Yankees, but New York rallied for four runs in the ninth and two in the tenth and beat Los Angeles 8-6. Boston stays 2 GB; Tampa Bay is 3 GB.

Lincecum, winner of the 2008 and 2009 NL Cy Young awards, has a 2.86 ERA. He did have three rough outings in late May (15 runs in 15.1 innings), but he has rebounded, with a 2.17 ERA in four June starts. Only Bill Hall, Mike Cameron and newest Sock Eric Patterson have faced Lincecum.

1911 - The A's Stuffy McInnis steps into the batter's box to lead off the 7th inning at Boston's Huntington Avenue Grounds and hits Ed Karger's warm-up pitch for an inside-the-park home run while the Red Sox are still taking their positions. Boston manager Patsy Donovan protests, but umpire Rip Egan allows the home run because of league president Ban Johnson's new rule prohibiting warm-up pitches. That rule was enacted because of complaints that games are taking too long to play; it will soon be withdrawn.

2003 - The Red Sox score 14 runs in the bottom of the first inning against the Marlins. They lead 10-0 before making an out. Johnny Damon singles, doubles, and triples in the half-inning, which takes 50 minutes to play. Boston wins 25-8, but manager Huckleberry Happytalk apologizes to Marlins' skipper Jack McKeon for scoring so many runs. Third base coach Mike Cubbage later admits he waived runners in knowing they would be thrown out because the Marlins "were having a hard time getting outs". (See the July 3 post here.) Inexplicably, Cubbage is not immediately fired. Jesus. Seven years later, this is still pissing me off.

119 comments:

I'm headed to the game with the wife and kids. Kids are most excited about the big slide in the outfield, cotton candy, and riding the train to the game. I may try to post from the game, but my blackberry isn't conducive to blogger (countdown to end of two year period so I can get a real internet-enabled phone: 6 weeks).

Re 6/27/03: Wow, I'm glad I didn't hear the Cubbage comment back then - the whole "too many sac flies" and apologizing thing really pissed me off as it was. Especially the next day when they blew a 9-2 lead and lost 10-9. I went to the 3rd game of the series with my parents and brother and we were all still upset. I remember Trot hitting a home run and we were yelling, "You should hold up at third. It wouldn't be polite to go all the way around," and encouraging them to pile on some more runs.

Gump was absolutely afraid of scoring too many runs when the Sox were up by 7.

And McKeon had made the comment after the first game that "they must think their pitching is really bad. Do they really need 25 runs to beat us?" And I was yelling, "Yes! They are! We do!" and then the second game proved it.

I just think that in this day and age, people can see any team they want whenever they want. I'd love to see it gone altogether, but I know that will never happen.

Reducing it would help though. I hate that we're already done playing the Twins for the year - and only played them 5 times - when, who knows, we might end up in a wild card race with them. (Uh-oh, is wild card a bad topic too? I hated that when it first came out but later changed my mind.)

Reduce it to 6 games (or 9 tops), and then it won't interfere so much with our regular schedule, plus the novelty factor that makes it $ucce$$ful will still be in effect.

Quick hello from AT&T park and my 3 yr old son's first baseball game. We all looked at JOS when Cactus came in for Blue Light, to see what happened. Good times. Got here just as Papi launched it! See ya.